The Online Revolution

What is the online revolution?

With the creation of the internet, and Web 2.0, a revolution has taken place in the online world, affecting the music industry hugely. Downloads and streaming can now take place of songs, albums, and videos. Downloading tracks from places like iTunes and Amazon now contribute to the official chart, and this is the most dominant way of how the charts pan out. However with this new revolution, comes the disadvantage of illegal downloading. This costs the music industry huge amounts of losses in revenue, as music is being distributed for free, whilst still costing huge amounts to record and publish.

David Bowie

Before the online revolution and the mass-usage of the internet came about as a form of promotion for music, artists already had ways of promoting themselves. 

David tried to promote himself as a musician through a number of different bands, swapping to another when their singles didn't do very well. But he struck gold when he release 'Space Oddity' as a solo artist a week before Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in 1969, as the BBC used it as the background music to the landing music. Space was cool at this point in time, gaining 'Space Oddity' a lot more attention due to it being part of a popular subject. To continue this success, Bowie cleverly played on the space theme and created himself as a persona. He was now part of a band called 'Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars' and created an album all based around space. At this point Glam Rock came about, Bowie played up to this, dying his hair electric colours, wearing high heels and glittery costumes when performing live. All of this acted as promotion as it drew incredible amounts of attention to him and his music from the public, creating himself a larger and larger fan base, and therefore increasing his success in the music industry.

As more and more success came to him, Bowie started to use the more traditional forms of promotion, for example posters and bill boards advertising singles and albums, radio interviews, his music being played on the radio, fan meet and greet signings, newspaper reviews of his gigs, magazine adverts, displays at the front desk of a record shop showcasing his latest single/album and many more. These forms were used by the majority of artists that were popular around this time, so wasn't as extraordinary as his first forms of promotion, but since he had already gained a growing fan-base and success, this was understandable. 

Arctic Monkeys

Arctic monkeys formed in 2002, a lot later than David Bowie, so had the advantage of the existence of the internet. They're a four piece from the suburbs of Sheffield in the Indie Rock genre. They started the revolution of online marketing and promotion, becoming famous by an unfinished track uploaded to MySpace by a friend of the band. They were unaware what MySpace even was at the time, but it was being updated with their music, and was being shared across the internet, growing and growing in popularity. This meant that they gained their fame for free as well as not being part of a record label, so were independent to do whatever they felt was best for the band.